Mounts Bay Coastal Resilience Strategy
Mounts Bay is a beautiful and vital part of Cornwall. It’s home to thriving communities, historic harbours, popular beaches, and important natural habitats. However, the coastline faces growing challenges from the sea. Without action, many of the things we value here could be lost. Lots of the defences in Mounts Bay are ageing and in poor condition. Some are patched up after storms, but this “do minimum” approach is unsustainable and not cost-effective. Rising sea levels and more extreme weather will also put existing defences under increasing pressure. This will put homes, businesses, roads, and railways at risk. The graphic below shows some of the risks to Mounts Bay without action:
Cornwall Council and the Environment Agency have developed a joint strategy to manage flooding and coastal erosion risks in Mounts Bay, now and into the future. The Mounts Bay Strategy has three key aims:
- Provide a long term structure for flood and coastal erosion risk management. This approach means we can prioritise the most urgent projects. It also means we can be confident completing these projects won't negatively affect other areas of the bay.
- Inform and guide other initiatives in the area to develop in a sustainable manner, considering risk management plans.
Ensure coordinated investment across the bay. Identify potential synergies between organisations and opportunities to work together.
What is the Mounts Bay Coastal Resilience Strategy?
The Mounts Bay Coastal Resilience Strategy brings together lots of studies completed in the area over the last 10 years. It analyses all available management options to find a preferred approach for the future. This approach gives an overall plan for the whole bay. We can implement individual projects based on this overall plan, which focuses on controlled adaptation with sandscaping. This would include:
- Maintain existing defences around the harbours and Mousehole coast road
- Implement sandscaping around Eastern Green and Longrock
- Build control structures to protect Penzance promenade
- Controlled setback of defences in western Marazion and Tolcarne, gradually moving the defence inland in a managed way
- Incorporate nature based solutions where possible. Examples include around the Lariggan Valley and Foster Bolitho Gardens. We can also green existing structures.
You can find out more about what the preferred option would mean for your area in our Mounts Bay Strategy summary document.
Want to find out more?
We hosted a Facebook live event about the strategy on the 23rd March. At this event, Julie Skentelbery put questions to a panel made up of Cornwall Council, the Environment Agency, technical experts and local representatives. The discussion gave more information and answered your questions about the strategy. You can watch the recording here. If you have further questions, you can submit them at the bottom of this page.
Public feedback
We have just completed a public consultation on the draft strategy. Thank you to everyone who came to see us, watched our Q&A or completed the survey. We are now collating all the feedback and implementing changes.
Next Steps
Once any post-consultation changes have been made, Cornwall Council's portfolio holder for Environment & Climate Change will decide whether to adopt the strategy on behalf of Cornwall Council in July.
Q&A session recording
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Watch our public Q&A on the Mounts Bay Coastal Resilience Strategy, where Julie Skentelbery puts questions from the public to a panel. You can also ask questions at the bottom of this page, which we will provide written answers to.